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Influencers on YouTube: a quantitative study on young people’s use and perception of videos about political and societal topics

The roles of YouTube videos and YouTubers for getting information about political and societal topics are becoming gradually more important to young people. Quantitative research about young people’s use and perception of YouTube-videos and their potential effects on opinion formation is sparse though. This cross-sectional quantitative study addresses this empirical gap. We examined young people’s analytic-critical evaluations of YouTubers and their videos about political and societal topics (YTPS-videos), and how these are affected by the young people’s age and gender. We analysed questionnaire data of 562 participants and divided them into three different age groups. Overall, the participants reported a moderate watching frequency of YTPS-videos. They also rated YTPS-videos as moderately credible and considered specific characteristics of YTPS-videos and their producers as being moderately indicative for fake news. When comparing to traditional TV news, YTPS-videos were perceived as more entertaining, emotional, funny, exciting, modern, and motivating but also as more subjective and manipulating. Regarding YouTubers, the participants ascribed them an important role model function, but criticised them for handling it rather irresponsibly. Concerning opinion formation processes, the participants reported of a rather unimportant role of YTPS-videos for their learning about political and societal topics. They also perceived themselves as less influenceable than other peers and younger people. Still, they prefer talking with friends instead of teachers about YTPS-videos. Age and gender also had effects on various scales. These results deliver essential data for future research and educational measures and opened up unexplored areas in this research field.

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When Do False Accusations Lead to False Confessions? Preliminary Evidence for a Potentially Overlooked Alternative Explanation

ABSTRACTIn the present study, we have taken a novel approach in confession research to investigate and compare situational as well as individual risk factors among false confessors and true deniers among imprisoned offenders who all had been falsely accused by the police. Furthermore, we report first data on self-reported false confession rates among German prison inmates. A semi-structured interview was conducted in four northern German prisons focusing on the interrogation situations in which the participants were falsely accused of a crime they had not committed. Of all respondents, 32% reported to have made a false confession, which is consistent with prior findings in the field. In line with the literature, prison inmates indicated fear of negative consequences and beliefs that the truth will come out as frequent reasons for false confessions. Notably, also strategic/instrumental purposes of their false confessions aimed at minimizing legal or personal repercussions due to the false accusations were revealed – although to a lesser degree. Implications from this preliminary alternative explanation based on strategic considerations for false confessions will be discussed in light of the common theoretical framework that focuses on psychological distress and deficits of false confessors.

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Across a migratory divide: divergent migration directions and non‐breeding grounds of Eurasian reed warblers revealed by geolocators and stable isotopes

Migratory divides represent narrow zones of overlap between parapatric populations with distinct migration directions and, consequently, expected divergent non‐breeding distributions. The composition of the mixed population at a migratory divide and the corresponding non‐breeding ranges remain, however, unknown for many Palaearctic‐African migrants. Here, we used light‐level geolocation to track migration direction and non‐breeding grounds of Eurasian reed warblers Acrocephalus scirpaceus from three breeding populations across the species’ migratory divide. Moreover, by using feathers grown at non‐breeding grounds, we quantified stable isotope composition for individuals with known southwestern (SW) and southeastern (SE) migration directions. On a larger sample per population, we then assessed the proportions of SW‐ and SE‐migrating phenotypes in each of the three populations. All tracked reed warblers from Germany and two thirds of the birds tagged from the Czech population headed initially SW. Nevertheless, about one third of the birds from the Czech site migrated towards SE. No tracking data have been obtained for the Bulgarian population. The initial migration direction determined by geolocators was a strong predictor of the non‐breeding region, with SW migrants staying in west Africa and SE migrants in central Africa. Feather δ34S and δ15N values confirmed the predominance of SW migrants in the German population, the co‐occurrence of SW and SE migrants in the Czech population, and indicated a high (72%) proportion of SE migrants in the Bulgarian population. Thus, the combined approach of geolocator tracking and stable isotopic assignments provided clear evidence for the existence of a migratory divide in the southeast of central Europe and predicted non‐breeding range in central and central‐eastern Africa for the eastern population.

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